This Week in African Tech 🌍 [October 6th]

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Welcome to Tech Safari Weekly - where we round up everything that happened this week in African Tech.

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Let’s dive in:

Tech roundup

• Nigerian fintech OPay denies opening accounts for customers without consent. Allegations began on the social media platform “X”, where customers claimed unauthorized OPay accounts linked to their phone numbers. Opay’s website says they have over 35 million registered app users.

• Netflix scraps its free plan in Kenya. From next month, Kenyans will need a paid subscription to keep streaming. Netflix is chasing more revenue due to tougher competition.

• Elon Musk’s Starlink goes live in Zambia, their sixth African market. The internet service will cost 10,744 Zambian kwacha ($505) for the hardware and 507 Zambian kwacha ($24) for the monthly subscription.
• Troubled Twiga Foods blocks liquidation push in court. The insolvency claims were filed by Incentro Africa Limited, a cloud services provider, seeking over USD 250K from the Kenyan agritech firm.

Deal Roundup

• South African fintech Stitch announces $25m Series A extension round led by Ribbit Capital. Stich raised $21 million Series A early last year, using it to launch new product lines like Stitch payments suite, and WigWag, a no-code payment links platform for small businesses.

• Five Nigerian startups join Techstars Toronto. These are Oval, Cutstruct, Chimoney, Payfi, and Reeple.ai. They join a cohort of 24 new startups, bringing the Canadian accelerator’s total investments to 100.
• South Africa's VC firm, Secha Capital, raises the first close of its second fund. They've closed $15.7 million of their $34 million target, led by RMB ventures, 27four, and Caleo capital.
• Kenya's Buy Now Pay Later startup Lipa Later, raises US$3.4 million in private debt. The raise was supported by Rubicon Landing (transaction advisory experts) and legal guidance from KN Law.
• Egyptian fintech MoneyHash, which provides an API and dashboard for checkouts, MoneyHash has raised undisclosed funding from GitHub founder, Tom Preston-Werner. This amount is part of a seed round they're announcing soon.

Events and Opportunities

In this week’s newsletter, we have a bunch of events and opportunities in African Tech. From exciting conferences to funding programs.

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